Aftermath Can Make One Old In A Hurry

Baseball's Cy Young Award carries a silent warning: no guarantee for future health and happiness.

Many recipients of the award for pitching excellence have experienced sheer misery the year or years after their greatest achievement, slipping quickly from fame to obscurity.

Some examples:

-- Baltimore's Steve Stone won the American League's Cy Young in 1980 with a 25-7 record. A year later he was 4-7. The next year he was out of baseball. -- Milwaukee's Pete Vuckovich won the American League's Cy Young in 1982 with an 18-6 record. A year later he was 0-2. The next year he did not pitch. Last year he was 6-10 with a 5.51 ERA.

-- Chicago's LaMarr Hoyt won the American League's Cy Young in 1983 with a 24-10 record. The next year he was 13-18. Hoyt made a comeback last year with a 16-8 record for the San Diego Padres, but he began this spring in rehabilitation.

-- Philadelphia's John Denny won the National League's 1983 Cy Young with a 19-6 record. The next year he was 7-7. Denny was 11-14 last year and begins this season with a new club, the Cincinnati Reds.

Minnesota Twins Manager Ray Miller, a pitching coach for the Baltimore Orioles when Stone won his Cy Young, offers some valid reasons why Cy Young winners often cannot maintain high efficiency. These winners, he said, have almost always been on either a pennant-winning club or a contender.

''There's probably no such thing as a jinx for Cy Young Award winners,'' Miller said. ''There is, however, proof that the guys who win this award get wasted because of the pressure in a race, the playoffs and sometimes even a World Series.

''Vuckovich is a case in point,'' Miller said. ''He blew himself right out in 1982. He went against Baltimore in an important game as the season closed. He threw 156 pitches. Three days later he went again against Baltimore. He was absolutely spent. He pitched two more games in the championship series and two more in the World Series. Now he was through. In the hurt.''

Miller all too well remembers Stone's great 1980 season. ''Earl Weaver must have had Stone throw five million curves. And what a price Stone paid.

''A pitcher simply can't go beyond himself. There's just so much pressure and intensity, games that have to be won at any cost. The price simply becomes too high.''

Last year's Cy Young winners -- Dwight Gooden (24-4) of the New York Mets and Bret Saberhagen (20-6) of the Kansas City Royals -- almost seem too good to have any problems the year after. Both are young and healthy, maybe invincible.

Davey Johnson, the Mets' manager, takes precaution in his use of Gooden, 21. ''At no time last year did Davey allow Dwight to go more than nine innings,'' Mets catcher Gary Carter said. ''If a game was 0-0 in the ninth, Dwight Gooden came out.''

The Mets are so protective of Gooden that they have assigned Jay Horowitz of their public-relations staff to limit Gooden's interviews, fearing Gooden might slip into a public-relations burnout similar to that of Steve Carlton, a four-time Cy Young Award winner in the National League. In spring training this year, Gooden is available to the media only after games he has pitched -- and then for only five to 10 minutes. ''We don't want Dwight getting fed up with writers,'' Horowitz said. ''Who can tell what will happen to him then?'' Gooden seems unafraid of being the reigning Cy Young winner for his league. ''It's an honor, something I'm very proud of, something I would like to have happen again,'' he said. ''I don't think of it as a jinx. If I win it again, great. But what I want more than the Cy Young, more than anything else is for the Mets to be in the World Series. That takes preference. I want a World Series ring.''

It has been 10 years since a Cy Young winner won two consecutive awards. Jim Palmer of the Orioles won the American League award in 1973 with a 22-9 record, slipped to an embarrassing 7-12 the following year but came on to win in both 1975 and 1976 with 23-11 and 22-13 records. Palmer was 20-12 in 1977, but the Cy Young went to Rollie Fingers, a relief pitcher.

Sandy Koufax won three Cy Young Awards in four years in the National League. He took the 1963 award with a 25-5 record, missed out in 1964 at 19-5 and won again in 1965 and 1966 with 26-8 and 27-9 records. Koufax took himself out of baseball the following year, not wishing to be crippled for life with arthritis from the wear and tear on one of the greatest arms in baseball history. He was 30 years old.

''I had to drag my arm out of bed like a log,'' Koufax said. ''I could hear liquid squishing round my elbow, like there was a sponge in it.''